So, as far as I know flash drive's lifespan is limited by the number of read/write cycles. I'm planning to run FreeNAS 24/7 off my flash drive so I can free a SATA port for more storage. From my understanding flash drives aren't designed to be constantly read from/written to. How long do you guys think it will last, should I be worried about it at all?
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FreeNAS on flash drive: lifespan?
- Thread starter tyros
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Durkatlon
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No, FreeNAS runs everything that needs to be written to from a RAM disk, and the rest is mounted read-only. Once you have your configuration worked out perfectly, I suggest you back it up to a different machine. If the Flash Drive does eventually die on you (this should take a very long time indeed), you can just replace it with a new one, restore the configuration and run for years and years and years more.
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Reads are 99% (pulling that one out my rear) of what the USB drive will do, there are very few writes. Reads do not affect the life of the USB drive, writes do. Now this assumes no premature hardware failure but you can read from a flash drive even if you cannot write to it, or so I've read. The longevity of a flash drive running FreeNAS .7 was ~3 years but that system wrote all the time. So you can figure in this system it will last at least 3 years but more than likely it will last the life of the NAS. As Durk said, make a backup device. The method to that is once you have your system running, save your config file. Now reinstall FreeNAS on a second flash drive and restore your config file. Place one of those for safe keeping but remember to update it when you update the primary flash drive.
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